There’s a great piece on Flavorwire that anthologizes ten lists “that seem like they could be poems in and of themselves.” The writers responsible for these lists are diverse. I’m reminded of a term for a writerly sin that Gil and I coined — being “list-y,” filling a passage with a bunch of wonderful facts that when run together just add up to dead weight.
But sometimes a list is a dynamic object, grocery lists, laundry lists, books to read, resolutions of every kind. Bucket lists itemizing the wonderful activities you’ll someday get around to… although I have instead a fuck-it list, things I will not in any circumstances ever do in my lifetime, the ones I refuse to consider, like bungee-jumping from a helicopter or white water rafting down a too-exciting Colorado River.
There’s nothing quite like rediscovering a scrap of paper — buried on your desk or in your bag — and realizing that you’ve actually accomplished the things on it. Ta-da. I did something! No matter how small. I returned the DVD to the library. I picked the tomatoes.
And I remember what that day was, the crumbly soil, the sun, the smell of the tomato stems when I cut them. How my lower back felt when I was done. The taste of the salad, later. It all comes back with pencilled words on a scrap of paper. A list enumerates the world.
Here you can see Leonardo da Vinci present his qualifications for a job at the court of Ludovico Sforza in the early 1480s. One bullet point refers to his early designs for military tanks: “Also, I will make covered vehicles, safe and unassailable, which will penetrate the enemy and their artillery, and there is no host of armed men so great that they would not break through it.”
Nora Ephron writes about the things that she won’t miss when she’s gone.
Two are “washing my hair” and “the sound of the vacuum.”
Woody Guthrie gives his new year’s resolutions for 1942, including “Listen to radio a lot” and “Help win war—beat fascism.”
Sullivan’s Travels director Preston Sturges’s decrees “eleven rules for box-office appeal.”
The whole series is great:
A pretty girl is better than an ugly one.
A leg is better than an arm.
A bedroom is better than a living room.
An arrival is better than a departure.
A birth is better than a death.
A chase is better than a chat.
A dog is better than a landscape.
A kitten is better than a dog.
A baby is better than a kitten.
A kiss is better than a baby.
A pratfall is better than anything.
Pianist Thelonius Monk takes a bold-faced approach to giving advice to musicians in 1960.
Two are:
STOP PLAYING ALL THOSE WEIRD NOTES (THAT BULLSHIT), PLAY THE MELODY!
and
MAKE THE DRUMMER SOUND GOOD.
What I think I like the best of this selection is Isaac Newton’s itemization of his recently committed sins, penned when he was 19 years old, in 1661 – several years before he set his mind to the principles of calculus.
And so I’m going to borrow from Flavorwire to run Newton’s list in its entirety, from his notebook:
Before Whitsunday 1662
Using the word (God) openly
Eating an apple at Thy house
Making a feather while on Thy day
Denying that I made it.
Making a mousetrap on Thy day
Contriving of the chimes on Thy day
Squirting water on Thy day
Making pies on Sunday night
Swimming in a kimnel on Thy day
Putting a pin in Iohn Keys hat on Thy day to pick him
Carelessly hearing and committing many sermons
Refusing to go to the close at my mothers command
Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them
Wishing death and hoping it to some
Striking many
Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese
Stealing cherry cobs from Eduard Storer
Denying that I did so
Denying a crossbow to my mother and grandmother though I knew of it
Setting my heart on money learning pleasure more than Thee
A relapse
A relapse
A breaking again of my covenant renued in the Lords Supper
Punching my sister
Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugar
Calling Dorothy Rose a jade
Glutiny in my sickness
Peevishness with my mother
With my sister
Falling out with the servants
Divers commissions of alle my duties
Idle discourse on Thy day and at other times
Not turning nearer to Thee for my affections
Not living according to my belief
Not loving Thee for Thy self
Not loving Thee for Thy goodness to us
Not desiring Thy ordinances
Not long {longing} for Thee in {illeg}
Fearing man above Thee
Using unlawful means to bring us out of distresses
Caring for worldly things more than God
Not craving a blessing from God on our honest endeavors.
Missing chapel.
Beating Arthur Storer.
Peevishness at Master Clarks for a piece of bread and butter.
Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne.
Twisting a cord on Sunday morning
Reading the history of the Christian champions on Sunday
Since Whitsunday 1662
Glutony
Glutony
Using Wilfords towel to spare my own
Negligence at the chapel.
Sermons at Saint Marys (4)
Lying about a louse
Denying my chamberfellow of the knowledge of him that took him for a sot.
Neglecting to pray 3
Helping Pettit to make his water watch at 12 of the clock on Saturday night
Jean Zimmerman 
Thanks for the recommendation, that looks like a great site. I guess if you did it with a taller stack it would be a different kind of poem, more Tennyson than Dickinson.
Glad you liked the Flavorwire piece. They often have entertaining lists.
Which also reminds me of BOOKMASHING… the titles of a stack of five books read like poetry. One of my favorite bloggers did a piece on that yesterday: the blog is called SENTENCE FIRST. (Verdict later.)
That FLAVORWIRE piece entertained me, just now, so thanks for naming it; it includes the short list of William T. Vollman, a prolific writer (previously unknown to me, so I googled him), who writes about an astounding range of subjects, and whose EUROPE CENTRAL won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction. (It is now listed in books that don’t appeal to me). I guess his five-year STRAUSS LIVING AWARD has just about expired.
#3 on his “List of Social Changes that Would Assist the Flourishing of Literary Beauty”: “Make citizenship contingent upon literacy in every sense. Thus, politicians who do not write every word of their own speeches should be thrown out of office in disgrace. Writers who require editors to make their books “good” should be depublished.”